Day of Wrest

I stopped to watch this western sky today.

Day of Wrest
by Gideon Burton

The sabbath: day of wrest. I twist away
from all the rest. I shear and cut. I break.
This will not pass and press as other days
whose worried layers mud my mind. I make
a pause of purpose, better if I shake
up rhythms, sabotage, dislodge and blunt
efficiencies. If slow enough, I make
my week lie weakened, muted, stunned.
With time untied to let what's running run
itself away, I can be still -- am stilled,
and bold enough to hold, to wait, the sun
in slow progression warming -- if I'm still
     enough, apart enough, and emptied, calm
     enough to let Him salve me with His balm.

I drafted this three years ago in February 2013 and just discovered it in a notebook and revised a sagging stanza. This poem fits with what my church leaders have encouraged of late: more reverence for the Sabbath, more pondering, more spirit of worship. Taking time to be holy.

Another Weekend Drinking With the Sinners

Another Weekend Drinking With the Sinners
by Gideon Burton

Another weekend drinking with the sinners,
the wine like water freely freely passed around.
We regulars are here, plus some beginners.
We sometimes laugh, or drink without a sound.

Hung over from another weary week,
we're drinking to remember, not forget.
To fix what's broken, get up on our feet,
it's easier together, dry or wet.

In time you get to know the others' troubles,
at least you read the reasons why they come.
It's hard to razor smooth the bumpy stubble,
but harder still to walk away or run.

A piece of bread, a friend to hold the cup,
a reason to look down, and then look up.

Composed 8-19-2012. Revised 2-24-2013
Image: creative commons licensed, More Good Foundation

Slow Miracles

Slow Miracles
by Gideon Burton

To count, it seems, a miracle is sudden,
so deviating from what we expect;
spectacular, our doubting senses flooded,
immediate and palpable, direct.
For these, we wait, and when they come, we bow
before divinity among us strong.
Some miracles, however, are not now;
amazing, still, though their arrival's long:
nine months, a human life assembled new;
a golden wedding's victory over self;
a habit, years dismantled, till it's through;
a softened heart that's measured for its wealth.
     To live in constant awe before His face
     requires a pace in sync with constant grace.

Picture: flickr - Nathan O'Nions

Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee

Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee
by Gideon Burton
after the hymn text attributed to Bernard of Clairvaux

The very thought of thee -- oh, Jesus, sweet
to me thy sacred name within my breast.
Yet how much more with softest peace impressed,
thy face to see, my Lord to praise and greet.
No voice, no heart, no memory competes
with what thy name invokes, what is expressed
when Heaven's Father is through thee addressed.
This is a food to me as wholesome as it's sweet.
My broken-hearted hope, our joy and prize
awaiting in the garden, wet and meek,
eternity and healing in thy wings;
To those who fall, how kind thou art, how wise,
the living water that I thirsty seek.
The very thought of thee, so sweet it stings.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - Iko

Congregation

Congregation
by Gideon Burton

Their faces, lit by windows warmed by sun
that angles through the morning's weighting light
as laundered azure, cool as snowfall, spun
in skeins of atmosphere of alpine height.
Throughout the church the stirring silence spreads
among the listeners, afraid to breathe,
to miss the holy word as it is read
by God inside the preacher. Silence wreathes
the pews, foregrounds the ringing voice and then
again the silence, animal of God
that preys among the listeners who spend,
again, an onion's skin of reverence, shod
       with early, looming window rays, with rope
       that winds the pulpit thin with thickened hope.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - AllAboutMormons.org

Temper Me in Time

Temper Me in Time
by Gideon Burton

How evenly the flowing water, cold
and clear across the rounded granite stones,
obeys that downward pull toward the bones
and tissued core of earth, a cycle old
as setting sunlight sliding into gold,
then orange, red, then deepening its tone
to velvet violets, with black its home
of peace and pause where time does not unfold.
Broken, and yet I would revise this line;
crooked, disruption that I would disrupt;
mangled and botched, again, let me amend.
For I would straighten even as I bend,
would uncorrode what I do still corrupt.
As evening evens, temper me in time.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - angeloangelo

Wine: A Sacramental Sonnet

This piece is a companion to the sonnet I posted last Sunday about bread.

Wine: A Sacramental Sonnet
by Gideon Burton


As human life is held in bloody flow
That pulses in its circuit, keeps us whole,
So this, our Savior's flowing life we know
As we partake the water of His soul.
Confirm, oh God, the blessing of this cup
And let our thoughts recall the solemn deed
When Jesus for our sins was offered up:
The sacramental one who bows, who bleeds!
Our spirit minds flow back to staunch each wound
That each we give unto the suffering Son;
We cannot help to ebb the Savior's swoon,
Yet hoping help, find mercy newly won.
        What's swallowed in an instant and is gone,
        Endures in hearts that holy blood makes strong.


Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - SnoShuu 

Bread: A Sacramental Sonnet

Bread: A Sacramental Sonnet

by Gideon Burton

O God, Eternal Father, in the name

Of Jesus Christ, thy slain and risen Son--

That we who, heavy laden, full of blame

May through His spirit find our woes undone;

Recalling His weak body, frail as ours,

That long before Golgotha's final trial

Had passions known, disease, fatiguing hours,

The strains all human flesh must know awhile;

That we His name may take into our lives

As emptied Jesus did His father's breath;

That He, His words obeyed, may us revive

As His commands insure our souls from death–

        Bless, we pray, this sweet and saving bread,

        For we shall live who but for Him were dead.

This is an imitation/paraphrase of the prayer offered during the sacrament (eucharist) ordinance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The original text can be found here.  Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - six steps

No Still Voice and Small

No Still Voice and Small
by Gideon O. Burton

The Spirit, so they say, comes still and small,

As though the voice of God Himself were stagnant;

Or that creation's Author scarce can call

Who sings into the winds that stroke his planet,

Who roars into the crashing waves alive,

Whose sprouting, greening plants do shake and stir,

Whose million moving species active thrive.

No quiet voice thus bids such life occur.

As Jesus summoned, "Lazarus, come forth!"

So beckons God to each our dying souls,

In resonance that echoes south to north,

In burning, hot as magma, bright as coals.

     The Lord Almighty's voice is as a storm;

     His Spirit shouts and suddenly we're born.

This poem won first place in the 1995 Literature and Belief Writing Contest for poetry and was subsequently published in Literature and Belief 17.1&2 (1997): 99.  Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - damian 78

When visions come: be still, behold, be filled

When visions come: be still, behold, be filled

by Gideon Burton

When visions come: be still, behold, be filled

with liquid light as rich and warm as nights

where milky ways of wonder, darkly bright,

descend and rise again, then bursting, spill

electric, drenching silence white with widened will,

with fissures tearing heavens from their heights,

the comets curving earthward in their flight.

But as the autumn-embered airways dim

or glow with pulsing heavy banks of sky,

so dark with water seeping down the high

descent, diffused by saffron shredded thin--

so I have traced his wingspan, seen him fly

in circling, curving arcs with scanning eye

that spans the chasms where I sinking swim.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: NASA

John Donne: Holy Sonnet VII

Since this week leads up to Easter and celebration of the Resurrection, today's sabbath sonnet comes from John Donne, whose Holy Sonnet VII so vividly imagines the return to bodies.

Holy Sonnet VII
by John Donne


At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there.   Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood. 


Photo: flickr - globevisions

Batter My Heart - John Donne

For this week's sabbath sonnet I post one of the holy sonnets of John Donne. Pictured here is the sonnet from a 1639 edition of Donne's poetry that I own -- one of my great treasures. The little book is the same size as a prayer book. Devotional poetry is poetry of piety and praise. But it is also private, something that you carry with you in a little book, or in a little poem of just over a dozen lines.  Donne's imagery is bold and his tone far different than the sentimental verse of so many religious writers. This guy is in the trenches of spiritual warfare, and he's calling in the General.

Holy Sonnet XIV - Batter My Heart

by John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. 

Baptism

I've written a lot of religiously oriented sonnets. Some are imitations of scriptural passages, others are meditations on various spiritual matters or items from church history. Maybe I'll try to do a series of "sabbath sonnets" for every Sunday. So here's one:

Baptism

by Gideon Burton

A gray and troubled ocean laps around

my chest, the chilled and murky liquid stings

my limbs, my skin. My heart, a stone, now sounds

another fathom: darkens, quiets, sinks.

Above, the twilight weakly plies the surface,

grows distant; I drop in ashen silt.    

The downward current traps me with its bias,

all color black but this my crimson guilt.

With sudden force, uprushed into the light,

I burst into the breath of boldest day.

By hands unseen, with grappling grace and might,

the murky ice dissolves to passing spray.

   With calming force he warms a chilling soul;

   With arms and warmth revives and makes me whole.

Feel free to copy, imitate, remix, or redistribute this poem as long as you give proper acknowledgment of authorship. Photo: flickr - ant.photos